The Two Things I Really Wanted

With every unit of my desire, I wanted Mexican pesos and a wifi connection. 

It feels amazingly destitute to arrive in a land, at night, where I can barely communicate, and find my debit card spat back rudely from the ATMs and without wifi to call my bank about it (I knew enough Spanish that I gathered it was a card problem not an ATM problem). Come on, networks. Come on, ATM. Pleasepleaseplease I mantrad. I've been spoiled usually to arrive into a foreign airport that includes a waiting friend or contact person. But not this time. I was very much in solitude with this problem.

There was the option to lay sideways my massive bicycle box (hey! It arrived safely!), sit upon it, and wail for a while in the middle of the emptying airport. 

But instead I tried the ATM one more time, looked resentfully at the pay phone that I could not pay (no money without wifi to call my bank and no calling without money without wifi), and rolled over arbitrarily to ask a Mr Taxi Stand for help. He couldn't help with the wifi or the ATM, but he was able to get my card to go through to pre-pay me a taxi to my hostel. 

Which was my saving grace. And why I am not currently sitting at the airport on my box. 

Being driven through Mexico City at night as my first introduction was a surreal experience, the dark quiet streets, the forgeigness made more poignant by lack of sight. I was ecstatic to find the hostel actually in existence (at this point my burned brain was imagining all sorts of unfortunate occurances) and then not ecstatic to find that their wifi was non-functional. ("solomente ahorita", they explained, and I loved the diminutive "-ita" on the "now", as if it actually weren't a problem)  Then I got to explain, in my Neanderthal Spanish, that I had no money to pay them. 

Bless them, they let me stay my first night without paying. I slept in a six bed dorm, all to myself, each bed equipped with a darling reading light and a curtain. The place was so pleasing and like climbing into a nest; I forgot about wifi and money and descended into the dark and silent space in sleep. 

And the next morning the wifi became functional and I called the Bank and told them not to obstruct me from using even "highly doubtful" ATMs, which is what the ones at the airport had been. Even though I had called the Bank yesterday and told them I'd be in Mexico. 

Then I opened the hostel front door and set out for money. Stepping out of the womb and into the street, quiet Mexico City neighborhood, gently sunny, a whole new world. I did a wee dance at the door and strode out. 

And then to have a little fistful of colorful money finally pushed at me through a slot, was the most satisfying thing. 

My first couple hours here have been truly thrilling as I watch myself navigate the Spanish language. I have traveled in Spanish places before, but had never studied it. But this past fall, I took a joyful free-lance Spanish class for 6 weeks in Ithaca, designed for a snow-bird traveler. To now be in it, and trying to apply what I learned then, is that inarguable human satisfaction of learning. 

I can barely say much and I understand little--but even the tiniest pronouncements I can make, and the few words I do recognize, and the bravery to open my mouth and my ears at all, has me in delight. 

Mr Hostel gave me directions to get to the market. I listened, with that attention that comes when trying to grasp a slippery thing that I don't understand. Words I recognized studded themselves above the flow of unrecognizable sounds, and I got it. The lefts, rights, continues, behinds. I loved my Spanish teacher so much in that moment. It was working. At least for this. 

So much of communicating here for me is about regarding a wobbling foggy mass of sound that someone has just put into the air for me, deciding I comprehend a few key bits of it, and then ESTIMATING and INTUITING what is actually communicated. This is so different from how I speak English, going for exact perfection, the key apt phrase. A bemused look from me also goes far here, as the patient speaker trying to tell me a thing tries again, or puts forth some English, or we start a round of charades. 

It just breaks my heart to be among these beautiful helpful people, and to think how Trump is being so offensive to them.

My sweet hostel nest, even without money